(1867-1946) US author of (chiefly) how-to-write books, and editor of the usually accepted candidate for the first exclusively science-fictional Anthology, which was also sf's first Original Anthology: Adventures to Come (anth 1937). Despite this primacy, its actual impact on the genre was nil. It has been suggested that the eight contributors – none of whom appears to have published anything else – were pseudonyms for Esenwein himself, or perhaps students of his 1902-1928 writing courses for the Home Correspondence School. [DRL]

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We passed a couple of major milestones on 1st August: the SFE is now over 4.5 million words, of which John Clute’s own contribution has now exceeded 2 million. (For comparison, the 1993 second edition was 1.3 million words, and … Continue reading →

We’ve reached a couple of milestones recently. The SFE gallery of book covers now has more than 10,000 images: this one seemed appropriate for the 10,000th. Our series of slideshows of thematically linked covers has continued to grow, and Darren Nash of … Continue reading →

We’ve been talking for a while about new features to add to the SFE, and another one has gone live today: the Gallery, which collects together covers for sf books and links them back to SFE entries. To quote from … Continue reading →